1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to electronic trading methods and systems and, more particularly, to electronic trading methods and systems that provide straight-through processing.
2. Description of Related Art
Fixed income instruments, such as treasuries, mortgages, commercial paper offerings, corporate and government bonds, and the like, traditionally have been traded using an inefficient, error-prone manual process. Recently, the market for fixed income instruments has undergone a certain degree of automation. While such automation represents an improvement to the manual process, many of the problems and inefficiencies associated with the traditional, manual process still exist.
To summarize the manual process, a customer desiring to buy or sell a fixed income instrument first would make an inquiry, or a request for a quote, to a dealer that is willing to buy and sell such as principal. The customer may be any person or entity desiring to trade but generally refers to buy-side institutions, such as investment funds, institutional investors, money market funds, and mortgage brokers to name a few. The dealer generally is any person or entity that is registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) or an equivalent non-U.S. regulator to deal (i.e., to make a market for) financial instruments for its own account (at its bid price) or sell from its own account (at its ask or offer price). In the past, to initiate the manual trading process, a customer would make an inquiry, for example, via the telephone or facsimile transmission. Frequently, the customer would make an inquiry to several dealers with which the customer has a relationship before identifying a dealer willing to trade in the desired instrument. Because the manual process required the customer to telephone each of the dealers individually, the process of requesting price quotes could take several minutes during which time the market may have moved against the customer. Once the customer identified an acceptable dealer the customer and dealer would verbally agree to the negotiated price for the desired fixed income instrument and execute the trade.
Upon verbal agreement, both the customer and dealer would manually write the trade details on a trade ticket. A trade ticket typically comprised several layers of carbon paper, such that at least one layer could be passed to the back office personnel responsible for confirming trades. These processes are prone to error due to the manual nature of the recordation process. In this case, the trade details may be electronically transmitted to back office systems operated by personnel responsible for confirming trades.
Executing the trade, however, is only part of the trade cycle. Back office functions, such as confirmation, allocation and settlement, were also performed manually. Rule 10b-10 under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (“Rule 10b-10”) and equivalent non-U.S. rules relating to confirmation and clearance of trades require that a dealer provide certain written disclosures to a customer immediately after the completion of a transaction to confirm the trade. In order to create the Rule 10b-10 confirmation, the dealer would manually extract the details of the trade, such as those passed on the trade ticket, and create a paper confirmation—an inefficient process prone to potential human error.
As for allocation, the customer, if trading on behalf of several client accounts, would have to transmit allocation instructions to the dealer regarding the financial instruments being bought or sold to any of the number of different sub-accounts. More specifically, a customer entering into a large block trade on behalf of several accounts would provide allocation instructions to the dealer, for example, via the telephone or via facsimile. Again, this manual process was open to human error, not only in providing and recording the proper instructions, but also in propagating the correct instructions to the other back office personnel responsible for other functions, such as confirmation and settlement.
In order to settle allocated trades, a customer would deliver settlement instructions (e.g., Central Securities Depository (CSD) settlement data, including the CSD address, swift codes, ABA number, account number and account name) to a dealer via facsimile or telephone. The dealer would manually input this information into their internal systems to generate the confirmation and to facilitate clearance and settlement of the securities traded. Following the customer's approval of the information, the dealer would provide the trade details and settlement instructions to the relevant clearing agency to effect settlement of the trade. Similar to the trade execution phase, there was no direct link between customers, dealers, and clearing institutions to exchange trade details and settlement instructions during the settlement process. Thus, the manual trading and settlement process was prone to errors and often took several days to complete.
The traditional manual process recently has given way to electronic trading systems as mentioned above. In general, although the electronic trading systems have several advantages over the manual process, such electronic trading systems have focused on the discreet parts of the trading cycle and, consequently, suffer from a lack of compatibility and interoperability. Furthermore, existing electronic trading systems, in large part, simply automate the manual process and thereby perpetuate the inefficiencies of the manual process and fail to provide needed new functionality. As discussed below, because existing electronic trading systems lack compatibility across the various stages of the trade cycle and fail to automate key post-trade functions, existing systems have failed to eliminate significant sources of error and inefficiencies.
More specifically, because electronic trading systems are directed to discreet parts of the trading cycle, such systems do not adequately provide a means to achieve straight-through processing (STP) of trades, namely, to execute block trades, allocate block trades to sub-accounts, confirm the trade, details, allocations and settlement instructions, and settle the trades based on such information. Absent custom-built communication interfaces, a system directed to one aspect of the trade cycle typically cannot automatically pass recoded information to a system directed to another aspect of the trade cycle. Thus, the information must be manually duplicated and re-entered at various points during the trading cycle.
For example, even where a dealer uses an electronic trading system to effectuate a trade, the dealer must manually input details of the trade into a separate back office system in order to generate confirmations and facilitate the settlement process. As a result, the post-trade confirmation and settlement process remains open to possible human error, even where electronic trading systems are used. Moreover, typical electronic post-trade allocation confirmation systems are often incompatible with electronic settlement instruction databases and systems that provide trade details regarding trades executed in non-electronic formats, such as via telephone, thereby forcing dealers to maintain redundant systems. Although an improvement to traditional manual processes, unnecessary duplication of records and potential delays with delivery of trade details, allocations, confirmations and settlement instructions and in the settlement of trades still exist.
Similarly, although many market participants have begun using electronic back office trade management systems, such systems are typically incompatible with front office electronic trade execution systems. Thus, even if a trade is executed electronically, the trade details must be manually input into the various back office systems. In short, the electronic trade allocation and settlement of fixed-income instruments remains a fractured process that is subject to inefficiencies and errors and prevents efficient straight-through-processing of trades.
Furthermore, efficiencies provided by existing electronic trading systems are typically limited to only a portion of a dealer's or customer's trading volume. Dealers frequently enter into trades via more than one electronic system and over the phone. These electronic systems, while providing increased efficiency for trades conducted on each system, are incompatible with each other and with manual processes, making it impossible to recognize a benefit of one system across all phases of the trading cycle. Indeed, such disparate systems can add to the complexity and inefficiency of management of a customer's or dealer's entire trading volume.
The inefficiencies of existing electronic systems are further exacerbated due to the lack of uniformity across market participants. Because trades must be accepted and confirmed at least by the two parties to the trade (and sometimes third and fourth parties), and because different parties often utilize incompatible systems, there is presently no system available that can process trades from generation to execution to allocation to confirmation and finally to settlement to achieve true straight-through processing of trades.
In addition to incompatibility among electronic trading systems limiting their effectiveness, existing electronic trading systems simply have automated the traditional, manual process without changing the general trading-cycle paradigm and without adding new features to enhance the usability or efficiency of the systems. As such, the existing electronic trading systems have many of the inherent inefficiencies as the manual trading.
Thus, a need exists for a system and method for effecting straight-through processing of trades and, more particularly, for a system and method for enabling electronic execution of trades, an electronic allocation and acceptance system that is integrated with a standing settlement instructions database, such that settlement instructions can be propagated throughout the trading cycle to reduce the possibility of costly and time consuming error inherent in the tradition manual process.
Furthermore, there is a need for a system and method for generating electronic trade confirmations that conform to regulatory standards to permit the virtually seamless execution, allocation, acceptance, confirmation and settlement of trades.
Moreover, because most existing fixed-income electronic trading systems merely implement the traditional customer inquiry-based and inventory-based trading paradigms, such electronic trading systems do not provide a means for permitting dealers to initiate trading by transmitting executable, firm trade offers. In the industry, a message from a dealer to a customer regarding a trade is commonly referred to as an “axe.” Presently, dealer axes are communicated to customers via telephone or some other electronic based messaging system, such as through Bloomberg L.P.'s BLOOMBERG PROFESSIONAL® service, electronic mail, or an electronic indication of interest (IOI system). These systems, however, are inefficient for the transmission of axes for several reasons. Such systems do not permit the transmission of executable axes that are actionable by one or more customers to execute a trade. Thus, a need exists for trading systems and methods that provide increased liquidity and, more particularly, that allow dealers an improved means for initiating trades. Additionally, the advent of electronic trading systems has an additional flaw in that none of the current systems allow a customer to easily track their trades in a way that they are able to assess dealer performance as well as report information about their trading to determine the profitability of individual or an aggregation of trades. While this information has been available to dealers in the past, a need exists for a system or method through which customers can access data from various dealers in an easy to comprehend fashion so that the customer can easily assess the success of a particular dealer and/or the profitability of a particular group of trades.